


Thirst Was Made for Water

by interstitial



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Transformation, Canon Divergent After s7e17 The Born-Again Identity, Castiel & Meg Masters Friendship, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester Friendship, Dubiously Consensual Courting Behaviors, Fluff and Crack, Light-Hearted and (Relatively) Wholesome For These Trying Times, M/M, Truth Spells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27731080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstitial/pseuds/interstitial
Summary: Cas is hit by a truth spell. The results are unexpected.And maybe just a tiny bit funny. Unless you're Dean.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 151
Collections: 2020 Supernatural Reversebang Challenge





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my amazing artist, deliciousirony. Check out her other beautiful works [here,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousirony/pseuds/delicious-irony/works?fandom_id=27) and to my great friend and beta, shealynn88, whose stories are [here.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88) And thanks so much to the organizers of the Supernatural Reverse Bang. This is my second year doing the challenge, and both times it's been a wonderful experience.

The coven job’s a mess. They knew it would be, going in fast after a single day of research—witches and missing kids, man, Dean’s least favorite combo in the entire world. Sam gets the leader nice and easy; a clean head shot as they burst through the basement door. The knife she was holding above poor, screaming, eight year old Timmy Fothergill’s sternum clatters safely to the floor, so that’s a win if they can hold it. But the room is packed like it’s convention week at the Hilton of Evil. Dean shoots two more, and it’s barely a dent in the crowd.

And it turns out their demon patron’s there too, all decked out like a gothlord to personally accept their tribute of the week. He does the handwavey thing demons always do, and Sam and Dean crash back against the cinder block wall. The live witches drag the dead ones into a corner and Gothlord monologues at Sam and Dean while the poor little rugrat sobs for his mom.

“Once the child has been sacrificed to Hell,” Gothlord pontificates, “you, Dean Winchester, will be next, and your brother can watch as we carve out your heart.”

Dean struggles against the invisible bonds holding him to the wall, but as usual with demon powered captivity, it does nothing whatsoever to free him. A skinny chick in a black velvet Hot Topical dress grabs the dead witch’s knife off the floor and takes her place threatening Timmy at the altar.

And that, thank Chuck, is when Cas shows up in a flutter of wings.

Cas is still wearing his psych ward hospital pajamas, but peacefully watching the bees must not be on today's agenda. He takes down the demon first, burning it from its host in a crackling orange glow. Sam and Dean come unstuck from the wall and start shooting again, while Cas walks casually around the room like a badass, smiting witches as he goes. The ones who aren’t dead yet chant and gesture away like mad, trying to cast whatever nastiness they can before they’re filled with either lead or Cas’ mojo. The room smells cloyingly of incense and sulfur, and Dean’s feeling pretty good now actually, adrenaline singing through him and only three more witches to gank before the town is safe and they can drive little Timmy home to his parents.

An especially unattractive witch with blood red fingernails and purple hair runs to where the fallen demon lies, and stands possessively over his husk of a meatsuit. She snarls Latin at Cas, and a burst of green rushes from her hands and crashes into Cas with the deafening roar of a concussion grenade. He staggers under it, but if he screams, Dean can’t hear it over the ringing in his ears from the spell. Tendrils of magic spark around Cas, writhing against the walls and falling from the ceiling in slimy glops, filling the room with green and purple so bright it’s an effort for Dean not to waste precious shooting time shielding his eyes. He squints and puts a bullet in the witch’s chest, and Sam takes out the other two. Cas is grimacing in pain, with his body bowed forward over the ruins of his dress shirt, and his hands scrabbling to brush the green and purple goop from his skin. Sam’s got some slime on him too, but he shows no signs that it’s bothering him.

“I’M FINE,” Sam yells “GO ON. I’VE GOT THE KID!”

Dean runs to Cas.

“I’m fine too,” Cas says, while he slumps to the floor in a distinctly not fine way. Dean can’t hear him too well over the after-effects of the spell, but it’s clear enough from his lips what he’s saying.

Dean pulls off his flannel overshirt and pats fluorescent purple slime off Cas’ face with it. “YOU DON’T LOOK FINE,” he says, possibly a touch too loudly. “YOU LOOK LIKE HAMMERED CRAP.”

“Well, I assure you—” Cas starts.

Then he stops. His lips thin into a tightly shut line and he disappears.

~*~*~

“What do you think’s going on with Cas?” Dean asks later, when little kidnapped Tommy has been returned to his white picket suburban home, and Dean and Sam are safely behind salt lines, stripping down to their T-shirts and boxers in their crappy hotel of the night. Sam got a fair amount of splashback slime on him, and once the excitement died down and Dean had time to look at his own clothes, it turns out he got even more. Neither he or Sam has noticed any typical spell effects, but showers are in order anyhow, because better safe than sorry.

“Dunno,” Sam replies. The constant buzz in the background of Dean’s hearing is down to post-rock concert levels, already loads better than when they left the coven. Nothing a couple of beers and a good five hours of rack time won’t cure. “You tried calling him?”

“Yeah, while you were getting the room. I prayed to him too, and called the hospital, but Meg says he took off and hasn’t checked in.”

Sam towels some stray purple glop out of his hair, hauls out his laptop, and plugs in the charger. “I’ll try running his phone.”

“He’s probably fine,” Dean says. Because he is probably fine. Almost definitely fine. He survived for millennia without Sam and Dean to take care of him.

Although Dean does feel a tiny bit nauseous when he pictures Cas collapsing to the floor with his face all scrunched up in that grimace of agony.

“Mmm,” Sam says noncommittally, typing away at his laptop.

“Gee, thanks for your input, Chatty Cathy.”

Sam looks up and his expression evolves from resting Sam bitchface into a combination of fond and something Dean can’t place. Whatever the second thing is, it’s definitely girly and annoying. “Go take a shower and get the magic gunk off, Dean. I’ll let you know when the phone trace goes through.”

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” Dean replies, because it’s not like he wants to sit there twiddling his thumbs and looking at Sam’s ugly mug while Sam does all the Cas-finding work anyhow.

He heads into the tiny bathroom. It has no particular color scheme other than mold, and the housekeeping staff—assuming there is one—appears not to have cleaned it since the Renaissance. Still, a shower is a shower, and even the worst hotels are a luxury these day, what with the leviathan after them and everything. The water’s moderately warm and the pressure’s almost adequate, and when he lathers up his hair with the entire contents of the single microscopic hotel shampoo bottle, the scent is pleasantly neutral.

He closes his eyes and lets the warm water sluice the hunt off him. He’s achy all over from smacking into concrete during the slammed-by-a-demon portion of the fight, and if the water doesn't exactly pound down on his back muscles or anything, it’s still pretty nice. The bathroom pipes clank, or maybe it’s rats in the walls. It’s weirdly loud, even over both the shower and the ringing in Dean’s ears, but ignoring noises that aren’t either monster-y or making the hot water fail is standard cheap motel survival skills, and—

—Wait, is that the _shower curtain_ rattling now? Dean’s eyes pop open and his heart almost stops, because holy mother of god, it is the shower curtain.

Being opened by a brown, wrinkly, and heavily be-suckered tentacle.

There, six inches from Dean’s face, is an enormous, hideous, octopus monster.

~*~*~

Dean grabs behind his back for his 1911, but it’s not there of course, seeing as how he’s buck naked. His knife’s on the toilet lid, but he’ll never get to it past the gelatinous bulk of the monster, which takes up most of the bathroom, and its assortment of tentacles, which take up the rest.

_“Saaamm!”_ he yells in a not at all panicked fashion. He could just use a hand is all.

**“HELLO, DEAN,”** rumbles the monster.

Sam kicks the door in, Taurus at the ready. The monster bops Sam gently on the forehead with one of its mammoth tentacles. Sam collapses. Dean heart rate skyrockets.

**“IT’S ME; CASTIEL,”** the giant octopus monster who is apparently Castiel says. **“BE NOT AFRAID.”**

“Cas?”

**“A MATTER OF SOME URGENCY HAS ARISEN,”** Octopus-Cas continues in his very loud octopus voice. **“PLEASE COME WITH ME.”**

Dean steps out of the shower stall and starts sidling, subtly he hopes, towards Sam. “What’d you do to Sam, Cas? And you’d better be about to tell me he’s just taking an unexpected nap.”

**“HE IS TAKING A NAP.”**

Cas doesn’t make any further threatening moves, so Dean squats down and checks Sam’s pulse. It does seem strong, and he looks peaceful, if—given the relative sizes of the bathroom and Sam—somewhat squished.

“Still bad manners, dude, but he did have a gun on you, I guess.”

Sam landed with one arm underneath him. Dean shoves him onto his side so he won’t wake up with pins and needles.

“How urgent is the situation exactly, Cas? Leviathan-are-breaking-down-the-door urgent, or just I’d-rather-not-be-an-octopus-all-week? And if you wouldn’t mind using your indoor voice, you’re making my ears bleed.”

**“THIS IS MY—eh hum. I mean, this is my indoor voice, Dean. Your ears are not bleeding. As to the time frame—”** Cas’ beady, dinner plate-sized, eyes glance shiftily around the room. **“—it concerns neither octopii nor Leviathan.”**

“Oh-kaay then,” Dean replies, and reaches for a towel. If nothing’s about to eat them all whole, being dressed is Job Next.

Cas makes a frustrated-sounding growl, and amends, **“There is no exact time-frame required. However, sooner would be more felicitous than later.”** He nods his head—which disturbingly is also most of his body—definitively, apparently more pleased with this second, not in the least bit clearer, answer. Dean is trying to squeeze past and get to his pants, but he’s not having a great deal of luck. Cas as an octopus is maybe not Chrysler Building-sized, but he’s still pretty huge.

**“Shall we go, Dean?”** One of Cas’ tentacles shoots out and grabs Dean around his wrist and another does the same with his shoulders and Cas starts pulling and prodding until rather than walking calmly to the bedroom to recover his dignity and then maybe dragging Sammy to bed to sleep off his Cas hangover, Dean is more or less forced to step over Sam’s prostrate body and shuffle reluctantly towards the window. The glass has a hole in it surrounded by spiderweb cracks that weren’t there when Dean got in the shower.

**“Upsie-daisy,”** Cas pronounces, and lifts Dean bodily to the window. Dean’s cheek smacks into the glass. He has a sudden flashback to a youtube video he saw once of a six hundred pound octopus compacting it’s body down small enough to fit through a hole the size of a quarter.

“Hey! Hold on a minute there, Terror of the Deep. Are you trying to take me outside? Because first of all, I can’t fit. And b, I’m naked.”

**“Oh, yes, of course.”** Cas pulls Dean back down from the abortive window exit attempt and octo-handles him into a bridal carry. His body is giving and a bit jiggly where Dean is pressed against it, and surprisingly warm for a sea creature. It’s less unpleasant than Dean might have expected.

In fact really, if not for the part where Dean is a manly dude who doesn’t enjoy being carried around like a delicate princess and the other part where Cas is behaving even more irrationally than his recent norm, it’s actually kind of nice.

Cas slithers across the cracked linoleum floor, propelled on all of his remaining six tentacles that aren’t cradling Dean to his jelly-like bosom, past Sam’s snoring body, out into the hotel room where Dean was trying to go not thirty seconds previously, and from there across the hideous orange and chartreuse carpet towards the door.

“Still naked here, Bud,” Dean points out.

**“Yes; you look lovely, Dean. Truly one of my Father’s most resplendent creations.”**

“Um,” Dean says intelligently. He is definitely not blushing.

Despite being naked.

And now in the hall.

“Cas,” he hisses. “People will see us.”

**“I’ve noticed you humans always find an erroneous but less frightening explanation for supernatural phenomena,”** Cas says calmly, like its all about him. He doesn’t turn around to get Dean some pants.

Dean makes a series of token attempts at escape, but while Cas is less the consistency of concrete than he’s been in the past when Dean has hit him, he’s apparently equally impervious to damage. He slimes his way obliviously down the corridor and through the lobby. Both of which, by virtue of being the combined public areas of the cheapest hotel in the entire state of Indiana, at three p.m. on a Wednesday, are thankfully empty except for the clerk. The clerk is watching TV in Spanish and doesn’t notice anything amiss.

Cas squishes himself and Dean into the revolving door, lets it revolve them around to the outside, and just when Dean is seriously considering whether poking Cas in the eye would be out of bounds or not, turns into an eagle.


	2. Chapter 2

Eagle-Cas is to the size of a regular eagle approximately as octo-Cas was to the octopus Dean saw in the children’s petting pool at the Monterey Bay Aquarium one summer when he was ten and Dad was doing a case in Salinas.

Which is to say large. Very, very large. His beak is nearly the size of Dean’s forearm and his talons are as long as Dean’s thigh. His wings are big enough to wrap Dean completely up in like a cozy but terrifying feather quilt. They’re also a lovely golden color, but that’s beside the point, which is that Cas is big enough to pick Dean up like a naked rabbit who is afraid of flying.

“Cas! Cas! Put me down!” Dean yells, when Cas wraps his talons around Dean’s waist and launches himself off the sidewalk into the pristine blue sky.

“Down, Cas! Not up! Down!” Dean shouts, but Cas ignores him. The ground drops away at a dizzying speed.

“Put me down this instant! Your claws are hurting me, dude!”

**“I’m sorry, Dean,”** Cas booms contritely over the sound of the wind from his gigantic flapping wings. He readjusts his grip so that Dean is sitting more or less freely on one foot while being gently gripped around the arm by the other.

Dean is overcome by two contradictory sensations at once. One is a feeling of safety and peace brought on by a sudden flood of inchoate imagery of Cas pulling him from Hell. He’s never remembered his rescue exactly, just flashes of color and heat and a deep and encompassing gratitude that to this day makes his eyes tear up if he thinks about it too hard, which he endeavors never to do.

The other sensation is motion sickness.

Because Cas, and therefore Dean, are really quite high in the air now. The motel looks like a ratty old matchbox surrounded by other ratty old matchboxes, and the road it’s on looks disturbingly like the part of _This Land Is Your Land_ where Woody Guthrie sings about seeing below him that ribbon of highway. It’s not a vantage point Dean enjoys.

And furthermore, Cas is starting to swoop.

Like, a lot.

Shooting straight up and then diving down so fast Dean clutches the feathers of Cas’ belly to keep from falling off his talon.

“Oh my god, Cas; you’re making it worse!”

**“You don’t care for my roller coaster display?”** Cas asks. His voice has a plaintive quality that is entirely unfair considering he just kidnapped Dean from the shower. **“I could try a cartwheel courtship dance instead?”**

“No! No cartwheel anything! Please! Just.” Dean takes a calming breath and tries not to sound like he’s about to piss the britches he isn’t actually wearing. “Just fly in a nice, straight line to wherever you were planning on taking me, okay, Cas?”

**“Okay, Dean,”** Cas replies sadly. **“If that’s what you prefer.”**

“It is, yes. I do prefer that. Thanks.” Dean pats Cas’ chest feathers. True, Cas did kidnap him, which isn’t cool. And he did just say ‘courtship’ in a context that Dean is almost totally sure he finds disturbing and not at all sexy. But Cas is presumably cursed. There’s no reason to make him sad on top of it.

The scenery, when Dean can bear to look down at it, is really quite beautiful, a vast green ocean of trees and fields. Towns and cities float by like islands. And if Dean’s heart is still trying to jump out of his rib cage and escape, the rest of him is starting to feel a tiny bit calmer now that the ride’s evened out. Cas isn’t always the most trustworthy ally. Even when he wasn’t under a mysterious spell that Dean doesn’t know the purpose of but that can’t be good, he let all the monster souls out of purgatory and released the Leviathan. He stabbed Balthazar, who Dean personally thinks was a dick, but was still Cas’ brother and friend. And worst as far as Dean’s concerned—even if maybe it shouldn’t be—he broke Sam’s wall.

But Cas has also died for Dean. Literally, and more than once.

And he saved Dean from Hell. He flew Dean the endless distance from Alastair’s dungeon back to life and Sam. He didn’t drop Dean then. He won’t let Dean fall now.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got in-flight cocktail service?” Obviously Cas doesn’t, unless he’s been cursed to have a mini-bar up his butt too, but a drink to take the edge off would almost tip whatever this bizarre experience is all the way over into downright pleasant.

**“I’m sorry; no. But I can fetch you something once we’ve arrived.”**

In the distance, a city large enough to have a skyline of high rises and office towers is coming into view. Dean doesn’t recognize it from this vantage point like he undoubtedly would from the ground.

“Where’re we going, Cas? Got a rocking bachelor nest up here somewhere?”

**“No, Dean. Building a nest without the assistance of my partner would be inappropriate,”** Cas says primly, because apparently he’s a proper Victorian lady now. **“We are going to my bower.”**

****

~*~*~

Cas’ bower—whatever a bower is—is blue.

Despite Cas’ insistence to the contrary, it’s really rather nest-like, and the basic nest-y part is made of tree branches and leaves and the occasional strand of something that looks suspiciously like fiberglass insulation, so that part’s more of a brown and green patchwork with pink squiggles thrown in for variety. But it’s huge, even by giant bird standards, and it’s filled to the brim with random objects in various shades of blue. There are blue flowers, blue crayons, shards of broken blue glass, an empty blue recycling bin, a single blue high heeled shoe, a navy Carhartt that Dean’s pretty sure is his own, and a blue stuffed dog from that kid’s show he and Sam definitely never watched sometimes when it first came out, because they were much too old.

**“Here we are, Dean. How do you like it?”** Cas asks. His face isn’t very expressive, because he’s a bird and all, and besides Cas’ expressions—other than sarcasm—have always been on the flat side. But Dean thinks he detects a note of hopefulness in Cas’ voice.

The most salient features about Cas’ bower, as far as Dean’s concerned, are that it’s on the roof of a skyscraper in a city Dean doesn’t recognize, and that Dean is inside it without a cell phone, weapons, or clothing. Still, he can’t bear to crush Cas’ hope.

“It’s um, blue? There are a lot of blue… things?”

**“Thank you!”** Cas replies happily. **“I worked hard on assembling it.”**

Since Cas has only been cursed for a couple hours, and the bower is intricately laid out, with a branchy hall-like structure leading into the nest proper, and a large central “room” where the blue things are woven into the walls and laid in complicated patterns on the floor, he would’ve had to work very hard indeed—and possibly also time travel—to get it all done before his same-day-delivery kidnapping.

“Listen, Cas. Not to diss your nest or whatever—“

**“Bower,”** Cas interrupts primly. **“A bower is for courting. A nest is for family.”**

“Bower. Right.” Dean is a little afraid he’s heard the word ‘bower’ before, in bodice-ripping romance novels.

Which he doesn’t read.

Not that he has a bodice currently anyway.

He digs deep for other possible compliments besides “wow, blue like your eyes”, which would be both repetitive and kind of gay.

“It’s nice and uh, leafy, Cas? But maybe we should concentrate on reversing the witch’s curse? Because even for crazy-you, this is unusual. How ‘bout you bring me back to the motel and Sam and I can do some research?”

**“I’m sorry, Dean,”** Cas says mournfully, **“but I’ve longed to court you since I betrayed Heaven for your cause. If the effects of the spell are neutralized, I have no doubt I’ll return to the coward I once was, and be unwilling to try any further. I’ll go get you some pebbles now.”**

He cocks his head to the side in the same bird-like fashion he always has, only it looks even birdier now for obvious reasons, and adds, **“And a beer.”**

And before Dean has time to reply, he disappears in a flutter of wings.

~*~*~

This whole situation, if Dean does say so himself, is fucked.

Whatever that spell was about, it’s made Cas even crazier than he was before, and apparently he thinks he’s in love. Also Dean is still naked on top of a building in early spring, and his junk is freezing off.

He grabs the blue Carhartt—which, sure enough, fits him perfectly, if perhaps not as long in the shirt tails department as his lack of pants necessitates—and untangles a sky blue barrette and a Lowe’s brand tire iron with a lovely blue handle from the nest walls. He ducks under an arch of branches, and creeps out through the foyer or whatever. He was unaware before today that nests could even have foyers. You’d think with all the Animal Planet Sam used to watch as a kid, he would’ve heard of nest foyers if they existed. Maybe it’s an angel thing.

The skyscraper roof Cas built his bower on is barren except for cigarette butts and scattered trash. There’s no fire escape and the emergency exit leading back into the building is chained and padlocked closed. The street is at least thirty stories down.

It’s windy outside the protective confines of Cas’ basket weaving project, and Dean’s teeth are starting to chatter. He wastes a bunch of time trying to jimmy the lock open with the barrette and getting frostbite on his dick, and when that doesn’t work, he tries breaking the chain by bashing it with the tire iron instead. When the chain won’t break, he starts in on the door handle. That’s an abject failure too, but at least he works up a sweat and isn’t in danger of acute hypothermia anymore.

**“Hello, Dean,”** Cas’ voice calls out from behind him.

Dean flinches guiltily and holds the tire iron in a defensive position as he whirls around to see Cas’ majestic but annoying eagle-like form. Cas shows no signs of being bothered by Dean’s escape attempt.

**“I brought you a pebble,”** Cas says, **“And some beer. Can we go back inside?”**

A six-pack of El Sol dangles from one of Cas’ talons and an enormous, clear blue, sparkling stone is clutched between two others.

“I’m sure I don’t want to know, but where did you get the… pebble?” Dean asks as he accompanies Cas back into his nest.

**“The American Museum of Natural History; Manhattan, New York.”**

_Oh boy._ “It’s a sapphire, isn’t it.”

**“Yes! It’s the Star of India! Do you like it?”**

Dean means to make a snarky reply. He really does.

And yet, somehow what comes out is, “It’s beautiful.”

He tries again. “It’s um. Beautiful. Like I said. But you’ll have to put it back.” He unhooks an El Sol from Cas’ talon, cracks it open, and takes a long gulp.

“Not right now though!” he adds, when Cas gathers his wings in a way that might presage Dean being left alone atop a freezing cold skyscraper again.

**“Very well, Dean.”** Cas intones mournfully. **“If I may say so though, you are difficult to court. You didn’t enjoy being kidnapped. You didn’t appreciate my flight displays. I fetched you a very fine pebble indeed and yet you prefer me to take it away. Sometimes I think you don’t wish to mate with me at all.”**

“No, Cas, _of course_ I’m down to bang. It’s just”—Dean claps a hand over his mouth in horror. He definitely, definitely meant to say ‘No way are we going to pound town; I don’t bat for the rainbow team’, not ‘yes I would love to play touched by an angel right on my junk’.

_Okay, not talking, not talking,_ Dean reassures himself. _Just gonna have a sip of beer while I think and not talk._

He carefully removes the hand from over his mouth.

“Listen, Cas,” he says immediately, “I care a lot about you. I do. And to be quite honest, Jimmy’s got a hot rocking bod”— _Oh for fuck’s sake_ —“that I would totally love to tap. But in case you haven’t noticed, right now you’re kind of an eagle, so”— _Deep breaths, Dean. That’s more than enough Truth-or-Dare for the moment._

He drags in the slowest, deepest breath he possibly can. Cas has his head cocked to the side and is staring at him sincerely out of one birdy eye.

“Can you lie to me, Cas?”

**“I cannot lie at all. If I’m not mistaken, the witch you killed was trying to force me out of my vessel and into my True Form. However, the spell has gone awry.”**

“Yeah, I’ll say.”

**“You seem unusually honest as well, Dean. Has the curse affected you too?”**

Dean slaps his hand across his mouth again. He definitely doesn’t want to say his admission of gayness for Cas’ angel ass is the gospel truth. But that’s the problem with curses; they’re really not in it for your comfort.

Fortunately, before Dean has time to go off on another disastrous chick flick tangent, there’s a racket of clanks and clangs from the emergency exit. The door swings open in a clatter of broken chain, and Sam and Meg burst through.


	3. Chapter 3

The next twenty seconds are the same terrifying mix of adrenaline, confusion, and life-threatening danger that the worst hunts are, except everyone’s on the same side and no one seems to have noticed except Dean.

Sam comes through the door shooting. Cas disappears in a flash of blue and reappears in front of Dean in the guise of an enormous, tail twitching, roaring and growling, deadly-looking, lion. Meg raises her hand to do some demon thing or other. Sam runs forward like the reckless nitwit he is. Bullets fly. Cas gathers himself on his haunches in a move that years of falling asleep to Sam’s favorite nature programs have equipped Dean to recognize as the precursor to a savage leap at a foe.

 _“Sam! Don’t shoot!”_ Dean yells at Sam. Sam keeps shooting.

 _“Cas! If you eat Sam, I swear to God I will NEVER mate with you EVER!”_ he yells at Cas.

The action grinds instantly to a halt.

Everyone stares at Dean.

Dean considers jumping off the building. There’s a guard rail, like there sometimes is on skyscrapers, but he could probably climb over it before anyone recovered enough from the shock of his outburst to stop him.

 **“But Dean, Sam is shooting at you,”** Cas complains. He does uncoil from his foe-leaping crouch though, so that’s a plus at least, small as it is.

“Sam’s shooting at _you_ , you idiot. He thinks you’re a monster.”

“Is that lion thing… _Cas?”_ Sam asks. He lowers his gun, so that’s a plus too. Although now no stray bullets can hit Dean and put him out of his misery.

Meg starts laughing. Uproariously. “Heya, Clarence; nice digs. Deano; nice legs.”

Dean had managed to forget briefly in the fray that he was naked except for his overshirt. “Her, you can eat.”

**“Hello, Meg. I apologize for leaving the psychiatric ward without informing you. I am under a curse.”**

Meg is still giggling gently. “It’s fine, Clarence. No worries.”

**“Would anyone care for a beer?”**

Everyone raises their hands at once.

~*~*~

No one is shooting or mauling anyone else, they’re back at the hotel, and Dean has pants on. Other than that, the world still sucks.

“So, how long have you had the hots for old Feathers here, Deano?” Meg asks. She’s perched in an armchair, supposedly filing her nails while they wait for Sam to research up a cure for the curse, but actually asking Dean questions like the world’s most evil psychiatrist.

The worst part isn’t even that Dean is compelled to admit “Since I stabbed him in the heart the day I met him and he just looked confused and badass. Mostly badass. Did you notice how badass Cas is? Also that thing where he projects the intimidating shadow of his wings on the wall behind him? That didn’t hurt either. And those eyes. When he looks at you, it’s like he’s looking right at your soul. It’s terrifying but it totally gets my motor running.”

No, that—unbelievably—is not the worst part. The worst part is he wants to follow up with _if you don’t shut up immediately, Meg, I’ll stab **you** in the heart too. Only in your case, it’ll stick because I own an angel blade now_. But he can’t. Apparently he doesn’t mean it.

**“I have of course seen your soul, Dean. When I rescued you from Hell. It’s very attractive.”**

Cas is still in lion form. He’s stretched out across most of the unoccupied floor space with his head rested on his front legs. Meg occasionally reaches down and scritches behind his ears and Cas has the audacity to purr.

“Christ, Sam; can’t you research any faster?” Dean grouses. Complaining is safer than answering questions.

Sam looks up from his Search the Web or whatever. His mouth flattens out in an irritated line. “As a matter of fact, no, I can’t. And it’s annoying when you push all the research off on me and then complain I’m not doing it to your specifications. Your ‘I’m too dumb to buy a laptop and do my part’ shtick is manipulative and I only put up with it because I can’t figure out how to make you stop. I didn’t mean to say that though; please don’t ask me any more questions.”

Meg is laughing again. Dean gets a beer from the mini-fridge and drinks half of it in one pull.

“Whoops, sorry,” he says. “My bad for phrasing it that way. If it helps, I knew all that already.”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, okay. Can we all give the questions a rest now? Especially you, Meg. You’re not helping.”

Meg arches an eyebrow. “Aren’t I?”

 **“Thank you for your assistance, Meg. But Dean and I can ruin our relationship on our own,”** Cas says with ridiculous but typical sincerity.

“Aww, you’re welcome, Clarence. I love you too,” Meg replies. Much to Dean’s disgust, under her sarcasm she also sounds sincere.

 **“Meg,”** Cas growls.

“Fine, fine. I’ll stop,” she replies. She makes a ‘whatever, no big deal’ waving motion, and then leans down and pats Cas on the head. “In a minute.”

She grins big as the Cheshire Cat and Dean knows he’s in trouble. “You assholes rub off on a demon girl terribly; I really shouldn’t be this altruistic. Dean, are you in love with Castiel?”

Dean rolls his eyes at the heavens that are definitely not going to save him.

“How the fuck would I know?” he says. Honestly. “I’ve had a grand total of two relationships that lasted more than a night on the road, and they both ended badly. I kill things for a living, go out, get drunk, scam people out of their hard earned cash, and bang the bartender in an ally. The only people I really care about are Sam and Cas, and the only reason they don’t leave for good is because they’re too stupid to stay away. There; I said it. Are you done now?”

“Dean,” Sam says. He gets that disgustingly kind expression on his face he uses when he’s forced by circumstance to explain to a victim’s family members that the supernatural is real. “You worry about Cas all the time. You make heart eyes at him behind his back. You’ve killed every angel who’s ever gotten in your way, except Cas, who you keep trying to save even when he’s screwed up royally. You carried his trench coat around in the trunk of the car for eight months when you thought he’d been killed by the leviathans.”

Cas’ tail twitches hopefully. **“He did?”**

“Yeah, he did. He moped around like a teenage girl. And, Dean, we don’t leave you forever because we love you. You know what? It’s okay to love.”

“It really isn’t,” Dean says with conviction. Because it isn’t. It sucks. It’s the absolute worst. It hurts all the goddamn time, and then you just get betrayed. “Cas _broke your wall,_ Sam.”

“That’s for me and Cas to worry about,” Sam says gently. “It’s okay.”

“Holy fuck, do I need another beer.” Dean goes back to the mini-fridge, remembers he still has half a beer in his hand, drinks that, and takes out another one.

“Bring me one too, please? Right away?” Sam has the grace to sound mortified with himself. “That was too chick flicky even for me. Also, I can’t find a cure for the curse, but the lore indicates truth spells wear off fairly quickly. We should be back to our lying, more comfortable selves in a day or two.”

Meg slow claps. Dean hands Sam a beer.

“So what you’re saying is we need to lie low and not do anything dangerous for forty-eight hours so the truth won’t bite us in the ass on a hunt?”

“Pretty much.”

"And Cas'll be back to his human—I mean, I know he's not human but."

"Having Jimmy Novak's form again? I don't see why not."

Dean turns to Cas. Cas is licking the fur between the toe beans on one of his gigantic forepaws. He’s really quite regal. And kind of adorable too.

“Hey, Cas. Wanna come with me to Iowa? We’ve got the car garaged there and one of her piston rings is going bad. I could teach you how to do an engine rebuild. Baby’s kinda, uh. Well, me and Sam, we grew up in her, you know?”

**“The Impala is your nest.”**

Dean rubs at the back of his neck. Pick up lines are easier when you don’t have so much invested in whether they land.

**“Yes, Dean. I’d like that.”**

Dean reaches for his duffle. He’ll need an extra pair of pants.

~*~*~

_Thirst was made for water; inquiry for the truth._   
_~C. S. Lewis_


End file.
